Settings Of Play - Since this is Readers' Theatre, the stage or church chancel is bare with four stools for Susie and the readers on one side, and seven chairs lined up across the back on the other side.
The author has provided production notes with the script.

TARGET AUDIENCE

PERFORMANCE GROUP

Every Christmas, Susie's father gets very nostalgic and tells her, "We're blessed because we live in America...and you aren't poor." But one fall, Dad's business goes bankrupt - "I think that means being dead, only for business instead of people." - and Susie decides that Christmas won't come because they're so poor. So she devises a scheme to "buy" at least a little bit of Christmas by saving her lunch money and eating at a place where Daddy said poor people can eat for free. It is, of course, a rescue mission, and it is there that Susie learns of a deeper meaning of Christmas from those in need.

CASTING

8m, 1f, 1girl(s)

CASTING ATTRIBUTES

Non-Traditional casting, Features Children, Parts for Senior Actors

CASTING NOTES

This play breaks with the strict Readers' Theater form by having the derelicts move around the stage. Consequently, those actors will have to memorize their lines so they don't have to carry scripts during the sections when they are off their stools.
When the play was done originally, some of the more "prominent" members of the congregation played the derelicts - members of the church board, etc. They loved doing it, and the congregation loved it!

Jack Kurtz has been a Presbyterian pastor for 37 years, PC(USA), in Missouri and Northern Virginia. Educational degrees include: Doctor of Ministry, San Francisco Theological Seminary; and Master of Divinity, McCormick Theological Seminary. Mr. Kurtz has created a theatre company, Fools for Christ Parable Production Company, in each of his three churches, and he wrote and directed many of the ... view full profile